The big advantages the F-22 has over other aircraft is stealth, supercruise, and it's electronic warfare system....if you put it in a situation where it can't use any of those advantages, yeah, other aircraft have a shot.

The F22 was designed on a premise, destroy the target before reaching visual range, that has never been tested in war and wasn't backed up with much independent research. It isn't surprising they lost in close range dog fights since they were never designed to win them

The DoD argues that missile technology has improved so much since the 1960s there is no reason to get close during air battles. Until there is a war with an opponent who can actually challenge the US for air dominance no one will know if their multibillion dollar gamble paid off.

Carth:The F22 was designed on a premise, destroy the target before reaching visual range, that has never been tested in war and wasn't backed up with much independent research. It isn't surprising they lost in close range dog fights since they were never designed to win them

The DoD argues that missile technology has improved so much since the 1960s there is no reason to get close during air battles. Until there is a war with an opponent who can actually challenge the US for air dominance no one will know if their multibillion dollar gamble paid off.

Ive read scenarios where the Air Force has considered using B1B's with over-the-horizon Air-to-air missiles, being led to their target by spotter planes or AWACS.

No use for a fighter at all. Just spot the enemy and send a few missiles that direction.

Yes and in a real war, the E-3 Sentry sees the Typhoon coming in and passes the word over to a Patriot missile battery and scratch the Typhoons. Or a pair of F-22s fires from beyond visual range using targeting from the Sentry.

The entire point of the F-22 is it sneaks up on you and frags you before you know it is there (with AWACS guiding them, so they never even turn their radar on). Everyone knew from Day 1 the Typhoon was a better gunfighter. Heck the MiG-29 is a better gunfighter than a F-15, but in most tests (we bought some MiG airframes post cold war), the MiGs died before they got within 40km of the F-15s.

This doesn't surprise me. The Typhoon is specifically designed to perform tight, unusual maneuvers that would appear as the aircraft being out of control. In fact, it can be put in to situations where it is momentarily out of control and it's attitude control computers can recover it in seconds. You can't do that with an F-22. But then, the F-22 would probably never need to engage in close combat. It is designed to take a target out well before engaging.

From TFA:In a 2008 study (big file!), the Air Force-funded think tank RAND warned against assuming long-range missiles will work. RAND looked at 588 air-to-air shoot-downs since the 1950s and counted just 24 that occurred with the attacker firing from beyond visual range. Historically, American long-range air-to-air missiles have been 90-percent less effective than predicted, RAND asserted.

Why, that's terrible! Wait... "Since the 1950s"? That's a big range... As it turns out, if you go to slide 24 of the linked study, it turns out that 4 of that 24 were pre-1991, along with 527 of the shoot-downs. Since 1991, it's 20 out of 61. So, take it with a grain of salt.

"But there's evidence that, in reality, most air combat occurs at close distance, despite air arms' wishful thinking."

Reminds me of doing torpedo exercises back in the '70s. The older officers would do a WW2 periscope approach to launch a Mark 48 torpedo that had an effective range of over 5 miles. It could out-run just about anything in the water and could re-attack if it missed the first time.

With all due respect to the study, analyzing tactics from the dogfights of the 1950's and 70's (i.e, Korean and Vietnam era) isn't nearly as applicable as the 90's. The Iraqi wars did feature a lot more long-range kills than in the past. If the US ever went up against China or Russia... it will be on the back of EWACS support, unlike four decades ago.

/which is not to say the F-22 is great, given all of the other problems.

Dynascape:Carth: The F22 was designed on a premise, destroy the target before reaching visual range, that has never been tested in war and wasn't backed up with much independent research. It isn't surprising they lost in close range dog fights since they were never designed to win them

The DoD argues that missile technology has improved so much since the 1960s there is no reason to get close during air battles. Until there is a war with an opponent who can actually challenge the US for air dominance no one will know if their multibillion dollar gamble paid off.

Ive read scenarios where the Air Force has considered using B1B's with over-the-horizon Air-to-air missiles, being led to their target by spotter planes or AWACS.

No use for a fighter at all. Just spot the enemy and send a few missiles that direction.

I went one-on-one with an F-22 at the joint exercise they're talking about. The German Typhoon pilot got me in close enough to jump onto its back. Hand over hand, I crawled up the fuselage as we streaked through the air at 750 knots. When I got to the front, I used a rock to smash the cockpit window, pulled the pilot out, and took control of the plane. I then put it into a nose dive using my belt to secure the stick before bailing out. I was the hero of the day.

ManRay:Didn't the Germans have superior planes in WWII? And how did that work out?

Worked out great, right up until they ran out of pilots, planes and resources. The Germans problem is that the US could and did build more planes, tanks, ships, and guns then they did. The Allies did not achieve victory over the Germans through superior technology, but superior numbers and just good enough technology.

There is a long history of old aircraft claiming they can compete with the higher-tech stuff based on pilot skill or whatever small advantages but in actual combat they have rarely won in the end. MiG-15 versus F-86, MiG-21 versus F-4, MiG-29 versus F-15, etc. It's true the lower-end aircraft have some advantages at times, especially in the early stages of a new design like the F-22 there are often critical flaws. However, it's not enough to overcome the overall better stuff, especially after it has been tuned.

Everyone wants an underdog to win, especially when they're the underdog.

Theaetetus:From TFA:In a 2008 study (big file!), the Air Force-funded think tank RAND warned against assuming long-range missiles will work. RAND looked at 588 air-to-air shoot-downs since the 1950s and counted just 24 that occurred with the attacker firing from beyond visual range. Historically, American long-range air-to-air missiles have been 90-percent less effective than predicted, RAND asserted.

Why, that's terrible! Wait... "Since the 1950s"? That's a big range... As it turns out, if you go to slide 24 of the linked study, it turns out that 4 of that 24 were pre-1991, along with 527 of the shoot-downs. Since 1991, it's 20 out of 61. So, take it with a grain of salt.

Since then what have they been shooting down? A bunch of crappy iraqi planes flying from bombed out runways?

Modern fighters are limited by the ability of humans to stay conscious and that is a hard limit on ALL close-up fighting by aircraft. So in short, almost any aircraft that has hit that limit - and it was hit by the previous generation - will perform about the same.

Honestly, this all sounds like it goes back to pilot training and a replay of the attitude that the AF had about missiles back in the 60's. Missiles were supposed to end the day of the close-in dogfight. But with primitive radar and crappy IFF, pilots had to get closer to make sure what they were shooting at was in fact their enemy. It was the whole reason that the Top Gun school was opened; to teach actual fighter tactics again.

So, it sounds like the Air Force has come back to that mentality and the F-22 pilot training is focusing more on systems management than actual maneuvering in close.

In a real world scenario, if you get close enough to see a Raptor, you are either part of its ground crew, the pilot, or you are drifting in your chute after your ride got shot out from underneath you.

That said...

Cutting production was criminally stupid. They should have at least continued to produce them at a rate that justifies keeping the line open. In an actual shooting war against an air force more capable than the likes of the Iraqis, the Iranians, or vaunted Somali air corps (likely converted crop duster with a guy with an AK-47 sitting in the back seat), the Raptor will pick off the first wave of enemy, have to return to base to reload, and while that's going on the second wave (made up of far more capable aircraft) will pop on the scene, kill the drones the Americans use for recon and light attack, and make life miserable for the American ground forces.

You can't simply decide to produce a high tech aircraft from a cold start. We'll be scrambling through the boneyards in the desert looking to reactivate F-15s and F-16s in order to get enough planes in the air and then there is the small problem of not having nearly enough qualified fighter pilots. farked only begins to describe it.

If an F-22 crashes, Fire Rescue has been told to not approach the burning plane under any circumstances, the burning fibres in the aircraft create fumes that are both toxic and caustic, so they will eat through any protection you may be wearing.

The EF-2000, Rafale, Gripen, F/A-18 Growth Hornet, SU-35, Mig-35, F-15SE Silent Eagle etc, are all better aircraft then the F-22 for their versatility, cost-effectiveness, and ease of maintenance relative to the expensive and maintenance intensive raptor.

The F-35 is the F-22 but worse in every possible area.

And the Marines had an F-18 shoot down the F-22 in a dogfight years ago. And not even a super bug, a classic bug. The Brits did it to the F-22 with the Eurofighter, the Indians did it with the SU-33 flanker. The F-22 is not some wonder weapon, it is a very expensive air dominance fighter that doesn't represent a significant leap over other weapons platforms.

hdhale:In a real world scenario, if you get close enough to see a Raptor, you are either part of its ground crew, the pilot, or you are drifting in your chute after your ride got shot out from underneath you.

That said...

Cutting production was criminally stupid. They should have at least continued to produce them at a rate that justifies keeping the line open. In an actual shooting war against an air force more capable than the likes of the Iraqis, the Iranians, or vaunted Somali air corps (likely converted crop duster with a guy with an AK-47 sitting in the back seat), the Raptor will pick off the first wave of enemy, have to return to base to reload, and while that's going on the second wave (made up of far more capable aircraft) will pop on the scene, kill the drones the Americans use for recon and light attack, and make life miserable for the American ground forces.

You can't simply decide to produce a high tech aircraft from a cold start. We'll be scrambling through the boneyards in the desert looking to reactivate F-15s and F-16s in order to get enough planes in the air and then there is the small problem of not having nearly enough qualified fighter pilots. farked only begins to describe it.

What countries would those be? The only ones that come to mind would be China or Russia and if that happens the lack of F22s will be the least of our worries.

The F22s were made for third generation warfare completely ignoring the trillions of dollars we've already spent on forth generation. Not only should they have stopped production sooner the damn things should never have been built.